Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History
History
Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History
Biography
This was not only a needed victory for the Americans, but it was the
first occasion for a generation that British regulars had been faced
in the open, on equal terms, with the bayonet and defeated. At this
very time the British had just brought to a close the terrible war
with the French in the Peninsula. Their troops had been pitted
successfully against the best marshals and the best troops of what was
undoubtedly the foremost military power of Continental Europe; and now
the American regulars, trained by Scott and under his leadership,
performed a feat which no French general and no French troops had ever
been able to place to the credit of their nation.
Three weeks later the British and American forces again came together
at the bloody battle of Lundy's Lane. The most desperate fighting on
this occasion took place during the night, the Americans and British
charging in turn with the bayonet, and the artillery of both sides
being captured and recaptured again and again. The Americans were
somewhat inferior in numbers to the British, and the slaughter was
very great, considering the number of men engaged, amounting to nearly
a third of the total of both forces. In the end the fight ceased from
exhaustion, the armies drawing off from one another and leaving the
field of battle untenanted; but the result was virtually a victory for
the British, for the next day they advanced, and the Americans retired
to Fort Erie. Scott, who had exposed himself with the reckless
personal courage he always showed when under fire, was dismounted and
badly injured by the rebound of a cannon ball in the early part of the
battle, and about midnight, just before the close of the actual
fighting, received a musket ball in the body which disabled him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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